atma

Name: Michael Seebach

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Reviews

Adventure Time #1 is a wonderful example of what an all-ages comic can and should be. The dialog is genuinely…

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atma's Recent Comments
December 10, 2008 4:08 pm Dinosaur Comics (http://www.qwantz.com/) is probably the funniest, most interesting web comic I've ever read. It's simply astonishing to realize that the author has now managed to tell over 1,300 unique stories with the same six panels, and it's actually still good.
July 13, 2008 5:29 pm

@conor

If you prefer downloading to streaming (or want to save the show for later), here's the MP3 the stream leads to:

http://cdn.newsweek.com/media/newsweek/podcasts/onair/080713/Newsweek_noa_080713_complete.mp3

July 10, 2008 3:58 am

@conor

I have now tried 3 browsers on 2 operating systems, and they all seem to get stuck on the "Loading Content" screen. I'm guessing their stream's screwed up.

June 24, 2008 4:22 pm Oh, damn. Thanks, elise. Forgot about Yotsuba&. Seconding everything elise said, and then some. One of the most genuinely funny, genuinely touching things I've ever read, and each issue is self-contained. A little on the light-hearted side for you guys, maybe, but an excellent piece of work. Really fantastic.
June 24, 2008 4:20 pm

Hmmm.. Let me see. I've been out of the manga loop for a while now, but I have a few you might find interesting.

Like ArchMerc said, Genshiken is a very solid, very funny "slice-of-life" book about college-age geeks in Japan. There are nine volumes, but the first one is sufficient to get an idea of the premise and comedy style. I'd love to hear your take one this, as you guys tend to enjoy this kind of story.

For a straight-out awesome story which is relatively short and more or less self-contained, pick up the original Ghost in the Shell manga. It's kind of hard to explain the plot, but the premise is a not too distant future where humans have cyborg bodies, and the cops who fight crime using said bodies. Actually, this sounds a bit like The Surrogates, but it goes in a very different direction. Really good book; a manga classic, you should definitely look into it.

Finally, if you want something to directly compare to ongoing superhero comics, Hellsing is a really crazy, over-the-top anti-hero (vampire) with super powers story. Not much in the way of plot, but the action and drawing are excellent. Again, I would only really recommend this if you are trying to draw parallels to superheroes, but in that regard it does quite well.

Finally, I think you should go into the difference between the separate writer and artist structure of American comics versus the single writer/artist structure of manga. It's a very interesting distinction which is often overlooked.